Photo of Indian opposition leader with controversial Indian preacher is manipulated

A manipulated image appearing to show India's opposition Congress leader Rahul Gandhi sitting with controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik -- a wanted man in India -- has surfaced in social media posts alleging the pair met during Gandhi's September vacation in Malaysia. The original photo shows Naik meeting religious officials in Oman in 2023.

The image of Gandhi sitting next to Naik and another man was shared on Facebook on September 12, 2025.

"Rahul Gandhi met anti-India terrorist Zakir Naik in Malaysia," reads part of its Hindi-language caption.

The post surfaced after Gandhi was targeted by members of India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for taking a holiday in Malaysia's Langkawi in the middle of campaigning for local elections in Bihar in early September (archived link).

The purported image of Gandhi and Naik in Malaysia also surfaced elsewhere on Facebook and X.

Naik, a radical television preacher who has called the 9/11 attacks an "inside job", left India in 2016 and moved to largely Muslim Malaysia, where he was granted permanent residency (archived link).

He is wanted in India for money laundering and terror-related activities, while his Islamic Research Foundation was declared "unlawful" and banned in the country (archived link).

However, the circulating image has been digitally manipulated -- it also bears a watermark reading "ChatGPT" in the bottom-right corner, suggesting it was edited using the AI tool.

A Google reverse image search found the unaltered photo in a post on a Facebook page called Arabian Daily on March 23, 2023 (archived link).

The post is captioned, "In pictures: Dr Zakir Naik Interactions with His Eminence Sheikh Ahmad Al Khalili, Grand Mufti of the Sultanate of Oman, Dr Mohammed Al Maamari Minister of Endowments and Religious Affairs, and Assistant Mufti Sheikh Kahlan Al Kharousi."

Arabic-language media outlet Watan also published the photo of Naik with the religious officials in March 23 in a report about the preacher arriving in Oman to deliver a series of lectures (archived link).

Subsequent keyword searches found the image of Gandhi was likely cropped and mirrored from a video uploaded to the Congress politician's YouTube channel on March 5, 2023 (archived link).

The Congress leader was interacting with journalists during an event in London in March 2023.

As of September 30, 2025, there have been no official reports Gandhi and Naik met in Malaysia.

AFP has previously debunked misinformation around Rahul Gandhi here.